Thursday, April 06, 2017

If a just solution is ever to be found to the hugely complex dispute in the Taiwan Strait, its foundations will have to rest on the facts, not on illusion or the wishes of CCP decision makers In an article published in the Diplomat on 4 April, Dr. Liu Yawei, director of the China Program at the Carter Center and founding editor of the U.S.-China Perception Monitor, proposes five areas in which U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping, could cooperate after their groundbreaking meeting in Florida later this week. While there is much to agree on his first four “doables,” which among other things call for Beijing and Washington to work together in resolving a variety of global challenges, from trade to territorial dispute, his last point, which is specifically on the Taiwan “issue,” presents a picture of the trilateral relationship that unfortunately has much more in common with the Chinese Communist Party’s wishes than with reality, a fact which weakens the potency of Dr. Liu’s “doable” as a means to shed light on, if not resolve, the longstanding dispute. My article, published today in CPI Analysis, continues here.